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Match-splint ma-chine′.

Matches of cylindrical form have been made by compressing the quadrangular slips or drawing the wood through holes in a draw-plate. The Austrian circular matches are cut from planks of clean grained wood, by means of hand-planes carrying a series of steel tubes, which produce long, thin splints of wood of circular section. These are afterward cut into lengths.

In Rimailho's machine the block of wood is the length of the match. The machine has a slide carrying a series of tubes made out of a solid piece of steel and kept sharp at their edges; a frame keeps the wood in contact with the tool. The slide is moved rapidly backward and forward by an eccentric, and cuts a row of matches at each stroke, each fresh row throwing out those previously made.

De Bowen's machine consists of a wheel 20 feet in diameter, and 6 feet across the face, supported on a frame of heavy timbers, and resting on a stone foundation 25 × 12 feet in length and width, and 5 1/2 feet deep, laid in cement. This ponderous foundation is required in order to maintain the necessary accuracy and steadiness in the wheel, which makes 21 revolutions per minute. The blocks are clamped to the face of the wheel. A rest, similar to that of an iron lathe, and moved to the right or left in like manner, is placed in front of the breast of the wheel, and carries 16 annular steel cutters. The number of these may be doubled if necessary.

They are adjusted so as to face the blocks, and as the wheel revolves each cuts a splint out of the wood, which drops below. The cutters are advanced forward the exact thickness of a splint at each revolution of the large wheel, until they have cut through the thickness of the blocks, 6, 8, or 10 inches, when they are brought back to their original position by turning a wheel. The cutters are adjusted to cut the splints out of the projections left between the corrugations made by them in the blocks at the preceding revolution of the wheel. It is said that each machine, with 16 cutters, will cut 86,400 sticks per minute, 5,184,000 per hour, or 51,480,000 in a working day of 10 hours.

The sticks fall from the cutters in a shower into a trough below, through which passes a belt that carries them to a series of shakers having latticed bottoms, through which imperfect sticks and pieces of shavings drop. They are then deposited in cases with latticed bottoms and conveyed to the dryingrooms, where the boxes are placed in tiers, three or four deep, upon steam-pipes heated to a temperature of 120°, where they are allowed to remain a day and a night, effectually drying the wood. After drying they are arranged in parallel rows by another series of shakers and packed in boxes. They are then ready for shipment to the manufacturers, who perform the [1411] dipping process, that being a separate branch of the manufacture.

1877.

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